I know it’s kind of a faux pas to be part of the rat race to get the first review in after just a day, (or in my case, hours), but I just have way too much shit to say from just the first viewing. I’m not a writer so this review is most likely going to suck. What ended up happening here is I was taking too many notes during the movie, and at some point I ended up with enough stuff to fill up a review, so hey, why not? The very fact that I, dumbass extraordinaire have anything to say at all beyond “I liked it” or “this sucks” should speak for this film’s quality. Plus, in seeing it so early, I had the unique privilege of formulating an opinion without the hot takes or interpretations of others tainting my mind. Anyway, if you don’t want to read the ramblings of my brain at 2 AM, please click off, that’s literally all this is going to be.
Real quick Me History here with me and Eva and my having seen it like three times. I figure this is probably what informs my opinion the most. The first time I saw it I was like 14, depressed, and very dumb. I was very impressed that any series would have… themes??? ABOUT DEPRESSION?? Obvious 10/10. The second time I watched it I was like 16, depressed, and dumb, but in a different way. Somewhere along the line I had adopted the doctrine of “only media that makes me feel happy all the time is good”. Yes, my friends, I was a hopepunk person! Somebody like me could absolutely not jive with Evangelion and its whole despair aesthetic. The most recent time I had watched it I was 18, suicidally depressed, and still dumb, but with new wisdom. Art can and should actually make you feel more than one emotion! And! Evangelion is not just a nihilistic misery fest. Yes, life is difficult, you will suffer, you will never be able to fully understand others, but as long as you are alive there will always be chances for happiness. It was on this third watch that Eva finally landed with me and cemented its place among The Faves.
I came into this movie expecting a retrod of End of Eva but with little changes here and there, but it really is its own beast. Whereas EoE is hyper focused on Shinji, in this movie he doesn’t speak for 40 minutes. For this first stretch, we’re treated to Ayanami-look-alike falls in love with life while Shinji is wordlessly miserable. In both movies he’s depressed out of his mind, but they hit very distinct vibes of depression. End of Evangelion hits “Everybody sucks, life sucks, I will embrace death and solitude”. Shinji outright asks, “why aren’t you ever nice to me?” In Thrice Upon a Time, Shinji instead asks “why are you all being so nice to me?” This is my personal favorite brand of depression, one I go back to a lot: “I am a piece of shit who has done terrible things, I don’t deserve good things happening to me ever”. The answer to Shinji’s question is beautifully simple: “because we like you”. I think this is the first time I cried in the movie? It’s a very nice, low-key beginning, but then Ayanami-look-alike explodes into LCL. Thus ends what I’ll call “The Child Phase” of the movie. I’m calling it this because I think the split between parent/adult and child is at the core of all this.
Quick aside here, I think there’s something to be said about Asuka and Rei, the franchise’s cash cows, specifically being mass produced and stuck in the same physical age, like dolls. And yet they’re at radically different mental ages, with Rei as a child and Asuka having grown up as an adult ahead of Shinji. David Brothers wrote something about this and he’s smarter than me, give it a read.
So, uh, on the topic of these different generations, there’s a lot I got here in my notes. Shinji’s generation had doomed the children, like Gendo’s before him. That’s relevant, ain’t it kids? Um. Misato! An interesting development here for her as a deadbeat mom who has to be absent from her son’s life to protect him. There’s a nice close to her arc here where she fully accepts her role as Shinji’s guardian for everything that entails- protecting him, loving him, accepting responsibility for the things he did under her watch. And of course, we have the other important parent in this movie, Gendo. Unlike what you see in End of Evangelion, the conflict is not resolved not through introspection but willingness to understand and trust others (this is the truth that Shinji discovers in EoE. This is a sort of direct sequel, remember).
The final battle with Gendo and Additional Impact, let’s talk about that, yes? While the imagery itself isn’t as gorgeous as it was in EoE, I found it just as stunning. Yes, the CGI is kinda sus, but it worked for me in drawing attention to the artifice of everything. The catalyst for Additional Impact is the “Imaginary Eva”, an Eva made material through the foolish perception of fiction as reality, which just looks like Giant Naked Rei but with a human face. “Human” here meaning, 3D, real world, jarring as fuck in a cartoon human. This is extremely fucking cool, I’m sorry. Other stuff that does this is the stock images, Shinji reverting to storyboards, Shinji and Rei talking on set in front of a compilation of footage from the other Eva animation, etc. It’s a lot more direct than the footage of the cosplayers and the theater in EoE as far as getting across the point of “this shit is fake, embrace reality”. Uh what else about this battle- this and the fight against the nine billion EVAs are the most “whoa dude look at these robots punching each other” that the series gets. Truly, an Evangelion movie for a post-Gurren Lagann world.
Back to character shit! Gendo, a mainstay in the “four bad anime dad memes” that the kids love so much benefits the most from this movie. When Kensuke suggests that Shinji talk to Gendo, I immediately think “no way is that fucking happening that guy is the devil and needs to die”. Yet it’s at his most monstrous, face-blown-off state that Gendo is most vulnerable and most human. We finally see him connect to, or at least talk to his son in any meaningful capacity, we see what drives his dependence on Yui and desire for instrumentality. Both Gendo and Shinji were incapable of interacting with people, but while Shinji decides to let everyone die, Gendo is driven to stay with his dead lover forever and use her as a twisted security blanket. It’s quite the departure from the typical image of Gendo as just some cold, calculating villain. Kaji says a son can either pat his father on the shoulder or kill him. End of Eva is definitely on the kill side of the spectrum. As a child, especially a teen, it’s extremely easy to just view your parents as villains, but as an adult, one reckons with the fact that not only are they just imperfect people, but people who have felt almost exactly what you have as you grew up. It’s at this point in the movie where it becomes clear that Shinji’s an adult now— there’s probably something being said about Anno’s relationship with the new guard as an old head, but I’m too dumb to say anything about it. But yes, what does it mean to have an adult Shinji? The revelation he reaches is beyond “I will live with others”, being instead “I will live for others”.
I said earlier that Shinji gets sidelined for this movie, and that works best at the end where he frees Asuka, Kaoru, and Rei. He talks through each of their issues, as Yui did with him in EoE. A couple things to note here- Shinji and Asuka find themselves on the same beach as they did in EoE, but instead of choking her and bursting into tears, he just shows her kindness. Growth from “you will interact with people and it’s gonna suck sometimes” to “be outwardly kind to others”. And Kaworu! The ever one-dimensional anime dream boy Kaworu. His whole perfect boyfriend schtick is stripped down: it’s a front to make the people he’s attracted to happy because he selfishly believes it will make him happy. Interesting stuff!
As an ending/sendoff to all of Evangelion, it’s excellent. The four pilots who have been 14 since 1995 are finally adults, and all of their arcs across the franchise have come to a close. They/we learn it’s okay to live in a world without Evangelion, and without revisits or reboots. The countless Evangelions in the sky are replaced with living beings. Shinji is deconstructed, reconstructed, and revived in the real world with the rest of his friends. They don’t have to be in anything anymore as the same angsty teens, and we don’t need to see them that way either. Or fuck, at least I hope not.
I should probably talk about Mari somewhere in this review. In a movie that otherwise over-explains itself in a lot of areas, I’m glad they left a lot of things up to the viewer when it came to her. There’s a lot to examine for yourself, I know I’ve been trying to come up with something based on her Mary Iscariot deal. The mother and traitor of Jesus… or perhaps the two sinners closest to Jesus. There’s something there! On some level it’s weird to pair her up with Shinji so much, but I read that as “Shinji is willing to implicitly trust a complete stranger with his life and continue to get to know her as an adult”.
Extraneous Thoughts:
The movie definitely benefits from its 2.5 hour run time, I do wish more anime would spring for this kind of thing. 90 minutes is for cowards.
There are WAYYYYY too many booty shots of teenage girls in this. Just way too horny in an uninteresting way. I’m not gonna try to ascribe authorial intent here but I feel like they fell into the old trap of I’m Going To Become The Thing I Critique.
I’m scoring this at a 100, this has made me think and feel more than anything I’ve seen in a while. Bye, all EVANGELIONS!
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